A sobering report from Moyers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Subject:        A sobering report from Moyers
Author: Dick Edmiston <edmiston () earthlink net>
Date:           13th December 2004 7:40:00 pm

For IP, if you like.

Bill Moyers will be retiring from public broadcasting on December 17, 
2004.   Coming at the close of a distinguished career makes his award 
acceptance speech below quite sobering.   It is long, but well worth reading.

Dick Edmiston

--------------------------------------------

Battlefield Earth

By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
Posted on December 8, 2004, Printed on December 13, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/

Recently the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard 
Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award 
to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the 
Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive 
voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an 
environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is 
the text of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award.

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you 
never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just 
plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how 
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply 
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's 
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. 
He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic 
heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His best 
seller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" 
left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we 
journalists routinely cover � conventional, manageable programs like budget 
shortfalls and pollution � may be about to convert to chaotic, 
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he 
writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, 
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is 
causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the 
North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening 
gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of 
changes that could radically alter civilizations.

That's one challenge we journalists face � how to tell such a story without 
coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to 
understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable 
narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, 
there is an even harder challenge � to pierce the ideology that governs 
official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my 
lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from 
the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. 
For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of 
power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven 
true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by 
what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, 
their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is 
the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first secretary of the Interior? My 
favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us 
recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural 
resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. 
In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will 
come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking 
about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the 
country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true � 
one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. 
In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the 
polls believing in the rapture index. That's right � the rapture index. 
Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today 
are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian 
fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true 
believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century 
by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the 
Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of 
millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot 
recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for 
adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its 
"biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a 
final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been 
converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True 
believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, 
where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their 
political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, 
and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've 
reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West 
Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel 
called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. 
That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish 
settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why 
the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of 
Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates 
will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the 
Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed � an essential 
conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the 
rapture index stood at 144 � just one point below the critical threshold 
when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous 
will enter heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist 
to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer � 
"The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how 
millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental 
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed � even 
hastened � as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers 
who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress 
before the recent election � 231 legislators in total � more since the 
election � are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 
members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings 
from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They 
include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch 
McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon 
Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. 
The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was 
Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book 
of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that 
I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 
59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of 
Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible 
predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned 
to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some 
of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time 
gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such 
potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the 
environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and 
pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse 
foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and 
yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from 
oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and 
fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will 
provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's 
providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or 
socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... 
that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he 
Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no 
shortage of resources in god's earth ... while many secularists view the 
world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth 
sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the 
people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that 
militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the 
foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a 
powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the journalist 
to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a 
personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without 
expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can 
to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think 
of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the 
market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" 
And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center 
for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural 
environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the 
health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I 
don't want to believe that � it's just that I read the news and connect the 
dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 
has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. 
This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the 
Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and 
animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental 
Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions 
might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe 
inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles 
and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep 
certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting 
coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal 
companies.

That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and 
increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of 
undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild 
land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection 
Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars � two million of it from 
the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council � to pay 
poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These 
pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead 
of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going 
to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's 
clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's 
friends at the international policy network, which is supported by 
ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate 
change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," [and] scientists who believe 
catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations 
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to 
it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; 
language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of 
environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed 
by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the 
computer � pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; 
of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. I see the future looking back 
at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know 
not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not 
right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. 
Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? 
Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain 
indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And 
Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a 
journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be 
the truth that sets us free � not only to feel but to fight for the future 
we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for 
cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those 
photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health 
is what the ancient Israelites called "hochma" � the science of the heart 
... the capacity to see ... to feel ... and then to act ... as if the 
future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with Bill 
Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.


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